Credit: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
Several people have died following an explosion Monday night at an Ariana Grande concert in northern England, police and witnesses said. The singer was not injured, according to a representative. There were no immediate details of what happened during the concert by the American singer, but witnesses reported hearing two loud bangs coming from near the arena's bars. "A huge bomb-like bang went off...
Boxer is where the National became the National as we know them. People often talk that way about its predecessor, 2005's Alligator, the one where they figured themselves out after the warm-up sketches of their self-titled debut and Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers. And that isn't entirely untrue. Alligator was the album where people started to really take notice, the album where the National began to establish...
Linkin Park say they don't give a shit that a lot of their old fans aren't here for their new EDM-inspired sound, but it certainly sounds like they give a shit that their old fans aren't here for their new stuff. A couple weeks ago, Chester Bennington said that people should "move the fuck on" from Hybrid Theory, and in a new interview with Kerrang!, him and Mike Shinoda talked a lot about how their...
Arguably the progenitor of EDM music and culture, DJ/producer Paul Oakenfold has no qualms about the hyper-colored, mainstream juggernaut he has spawned. In his 53rd year, Oakenfold is more interested in playing Mt. Everest then bemoaning a culture that has been co-opted by the likes of the Chainsmokers, flower crowns, and the disastrous Fyre Festival. The death rattle of Fyre still reverberates; a...
Kate Bush occupies this odd Trans-Atlantic space between cult figure and pop star. It makes sense that she's had a long, varied, widely analyzed, and deeply studied career, and it also makes sense that she found an ideal space in the Top Of The Pops/MTV '80s to amplify her own singular voice with a visual and overall artistic sense that was almost intimidatingly uncanny. It's the way she was able to...
Ryan Adams honored Chris Cornell by covering Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" during his concert in Auckland, New Zealand last night. Similarly, Metallica's Robert Trujillo incorporated part of the song's melody into his bass solo on "Halo On Fire" while performing in Boston on Friday. U2 and Aerosmith also paid tribute to the late Soundgarden frontman during their respective shows last night, with Bono...
Twenty years ago, Dave Grohl accomplished something that once seemed impossible: He stepped out of Kurt Cobain's shadow. At this point we all know Grohl as rock 'n' roll's friendly worldwide ambassador, the dude from a zillion music documentaries and awards show all-star bands, the longhaired living embodiment of R-A-W-K rawk. He's got a long discography of Foo Fighters albums behind him now and is...
Though she ultimately spent more time as his widow than as his wife, Alice McLeod’s marriage to John Coltrane was destined, as though by cosmic influence, to change both artists’ musical and spiritual paths. The two met in 1963; they had three children in rapid succession, John wrote his opus A Love Supreme in 1965, and by 1967, he had passed away due to liver cancer, leaving Alice to suffer insomnia,...
Arguably the progenitor of EDM music and culture, DJ/producer Paul Oakenfold has no qualms about the hyper-colored, mainstream juggernaut he has spawned. In his 53rd year, Oakenfold is more interested in playing Mt. Everest then bemoaning a culture that has been co-opted by the likes of the Chainsmokers, flower crowns, and the disastrous Fyre Festival.
Speaking by phone from London, Darren Cunningham doesn’t initially want to explain the process behind his new album, AZD, the fifth he’s released under the name Actress. Given time, though, he starts to describe the album’s genesis with specificity, using different framing devices: the tools used, the colors suggested, the echoes of visual art. …
First day of school icebreakers are always awkward, but sometimes the most seemingly incongruous friendships are formed that way, and occasionally they’ll even lead to serendipitous creative partnerships. That’s how Trophy Dad got its start. On freshman year move-in day at the University Of Wisconsin–Madison, Abby Sherman and Jordan Zamansky went to a mandatory floor…
“You get to a certain age and you try to revert back to what it feels like to be young again.” This is the kind of thing one would expect Evan Weiss to say upon turning 33 and shifting his focus to Pet Symmetry, the punny pop-punk counterpoint to the autumnal indie rock of Into…
“I’m not sure whose water this is,” says Gail Greenwood right before taking a swig from a bottle she found on the stage of the Paradise Rock Club. “But it’s fine. I trust everyone here.” …
Ellen Kempner started Palehound as a freshman at Sarah Lawrence, and soon after dropped out of school and moved to and settled down in Boston, all of which led up to the release of her first full-length, 2015’s Dry Food. As her band became more established over the last couple of years, Kempner went…
Leslie Feist has a special type of charm. She speaks with a relaxing cadence, the same way she sings on her albums, and there’s an airy quality to her speech, like she could spring from her seat at any moment and begin to twirl playfully around the room. Feist’s voice carries the tone of someone…
Shamir Bailey, the 22-year-old Philly-via-Vegas polymath who goes only by his first name, made one of 2015’s best and brightest albums — and possibly its best debut — with the electro-disco revelation Ratchet. It was released via XL, home to Adele and Radiohead among others, and from his country covers and hip-house rapping, we always…
“Imagine a night where everything that you believed in was turned on its head. How would you feel?”
Just over a year ago, Damon Albarn was beginning, in earnest, to make the new Gorillaz album, Humanz. As he reached out to the predictably dizzying array of collaborators, that was the main question he…
Joan Shelley is looking for a table away from the music. “I don’t like listening to music and having a conversation,” says the Louisville singer-songwriter. “I can’t believe people can do that. When you’re eating, the music in a restaurant can be almost offensive. You can’t have a meal and a conversation because Third Eye…
“Yo, you ever put pepper on shit?” Alex Giannascoli asks me as he picks up a pepper shaker and begins seasoning the heaping plate of home fries a waiter just placed in front of him. “I like, just started putting pepper on my food. I never touched it before,” he continues. “My sister dumps it…
Corey Greenfield makes a mean taco. The drummer for Thunder Dreamer has toasted up tortillas, sliced radishes, and marinated a flank steak for three days. He’s made homemade guacamole, although he apologizes for not mixing in cilantro with the tomatoes and jalapeños; the bunches at the grocery store were too wilted. It’s a recipe he…
In a big way, Tei Shi’s Crawl Space is an album about confronting fears. The title originates from Valerie Teicher’s biggest phobia as a kid. Suffering from insomnia and a gripping fear of the dark, she decided to confront her fear by enduring the crawl space in her house. For Teicher, the crawl space has…
For almost two decades now, the New Pornographers have operated as a shifting collective of musicians adept at crafting music filled with hooks that demand sing-alongs. On 2014’s Brill Bruisers, they started exploring a more synth-oriented direction, one they continue pushing into on their forthcoming album, Whiteout Conditions, a characteristically punchy and catchy LP with…
Over the last few years, Real Estate have solidified their position as the beloved jangle-rockers once from New Jersey, now several albums deep into a career of well-crafted music full of chiming guitars and daydream melodies. On Friday, they’ll return with their fourth album, In Mind — it follows 2014’s Atlas and the subsequent departure…